Wednesday, August 8, 2012

School starts back up in two weeks. Do you know what the means? High school swim season is here.

When I pulled in the pool parking lot this afternoon, I had a hard time finding a spot. The usually empty lot was bursting with cars and I discovered why as soon as I walked inside. High school swimmers (at least 50 of them!) had taken over the pool.

They weren’t there long (maybe 15 minutes after I was), but I couldn’t believe how many of them there were. All lanes were filled with at least 4 or 5 swimmers per lane and the coach was shouting out drills left and right. It was actually a little fun to watch. When they all got out, they did some sort of freshmen chant that, I’m assuming, welcomed them to the pool.

Because of the high school team taking over the pool, our usual 6:00pm practice start time was pushed back to 6:30pm. This was a fact I had forgotten about, which is why I was at the pool early. Also, because of the high school team, they will no longer be changing the pool to long course in the afternoon. Boo. I really, really came to enjoy the long course, the short course is, well, short. I’m not a fan of having so many flip turns, and I lost count of how many laps I was supposed to be doing during our 400 warm-up. There’s less laps to count in the long course, which works much better for me.

Oh, well. Not much I can do about that.

Even with the short course, practice was fun. Yes, coach was still getting on to me about rotating my right side or picking up my left arm (though he did tell me I was doing better!), we also mixed it up a bit. There were 50s on1:00, 25s on 0:40, kick board, glide practicing, and even our first IMs.

Here’s something I never thought I’d say – I enjoy the butterfly stroke. I know – shocker! – who enjoys the butterfly stroke?! We did some 100 IMs and butterfly laps today, and something just clicks for me with the butterfly. I’m not saying I’m great at it, but I like that I can keep up with – and sometimes even pass! – my teammates (they whoop my butt every other time). I love having both hands to push myself out of the water and basically using my whole body to move forward. I know I’ll never use the butterfly stroke in a triathlon setting, but it does work different muscles that helps make me a stronger, well-rounded swimmer. Plus, butterflies are just fun, plain and simple.

What’s your favorite swim stroke? Freestyle seems to be everyone’s default, but I know it can’t be everyone’s favorite.

Before practice I had a bag of popcorn with peanuts.

I also had some of the raspberry Powerbar chewy thingys that Felipe brought. I’m usually not a fan of the Powerbar chews (they’re really chewy and not great for running), but I enjoyed the raspberry flavor and found they weren’t as hard to chew when you’re just standing still and not at mile 6 of a 14 mile run.

Basically, I heated the leftover chicken on the stove with some frozen corn and added heaping spoonfuls of salsa to the mix. The chicken was then served over a bed of spinach with shredded carrots, cheese, guacamole, and a torn tortilla.

The combination of the hot chicken, salsa, and cheese was delicious. I liked that it was super easy to execute and still came out amazing.

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Can I just say how much I love Lolo Jones? I was a fan before, but I think I’m an even bigger fan after watching her interview on the Today Show. I missed the finals for the 100-meter hurdles last night and only watched the race when I jumped on the treadmill and turned on more »